Dr. Death

by Jonathan Kellerman

  "No, but they might be, once they find out I'm back."

  "How would they know that, ma'am?"

  "Please," she said. "Don't be naïve. They have their ways." She dance-walked through the dining room and out of sight.

  Milo rubbed his face and turned to me. "Think Mate was boffing her?"

  "She did take the time to mention that their relationship was social but not sexual. Because we were obviously going to ask. So maybe."

  Alice Zoghbie returned, looking grim.

  "The press?" said Milo.

  "A nuisance call— my accountant. The IRS wants to audit me— big surprise, huh? I've got to go gather my tax records, so if there's nothing else . . ." She pointed to the door.

  We stood.

  "You climb mountains for fun?" said Milo.

  "I hike, Detective. Long-distance walks on the lower slopes, no pitons or any of that stuff." She gave Milo's gut a long appraisal. "Stop moving and you might as well die."

  That reminded me of something Richard Doss had told me six months ago:

  I'll rest when I'm dead.

  Milo said, "Did Dr. Mate stay active?"

  "Mentally, only. Never could get him to exercise. But what does that have to do with—"

  "So you have no idea who Dr. Mate was going to help the weekend he died?"

  "No. I told you, we never discussed patient issues."

  "The reason I'm asking is—"

  "You think a traveler killed him? That's absurd."

  "Why, ma'am?"

  "These are sick people we're talking about, Detective. Weak people, quadriplegics, Lou Gehrig's disease, terminal cancer. How could they have the strength? And why would they? Now, please."

  Her foot tapped. She looked jumpy. I supposed an audit could do that to you.

  "Just a few more details," said Milo. "Why'd you choose the Avis in Tarzana? Far from here and from Dr. Mate's place."

  "That was the point, Detective."

  "What was?"

  "Covering our tracks. Just in case someone got suspicious and refused to rent to us. That's also why I chose Avis. We alternated. Last time was Hertz; before that, Budget."

  She hurried to the door, opened it, stood tapping her foot. "Forget about it being a traveler. None of Eldon's people would hurt him. Most of the time they required help just to get over to the travel site—"

  "Help from who?"

  Long silence. She smiled, folded her arms. "No. We're not going there."

  "Other people have been involved?" said Milo. "Dr. Mate had assistants?"

  "Unh-unh, no way. Couldn't tell you even if I wanted to, because I don't know. Didn't want to know."

  "Because Dr. Mate never discussed clinical details with you."

  "Now please leave."

  "Let's say Dr. Mate did have confederates—"

  "Say whatever you please."

  "What makes you so sure one of them couldn't have turned on him?"

  "Because why would they?" She laughed. Harshly. Too loudly. "I can't get you to see: Eldon was brilliant. He wouldn't have trusted just anyone." She put a foot out onto her front porch, jabbed a manicured fingernail. "Look. For. A. Fanatic."

  "What about a fanatic passing himself off as a confederate?"

  "Oh please." Another loud laugh. Zoghbie's hands flew upward, fingers fluttering. She dropped them quickly. A series of clumsy movements, at odds with the dancer's grace. "I can't answer any more stupid questions! This is a very hard time for me!"

  The tears returned. No more symmetrical trickle. A gush.

  This time she wiped them hastily.

  She slammed the door behind us.

  8

  BACK IN THE unmarked, Milo looked up at the vanilla cottage. "What a harpy."

  "Her attitude changed after that phone call," I said. "Maybe it was the IRS. Or she was let down that it wasn't the press. But maybe it was someone who'd worked with Mate, telling her to be discreet."

  "Dr. Death had his own little elves, huh?"

  "She did everything but confirm their existence. Which leads me to an interesting question: this morning we talked about the killer luring Mate to Mulholland by posing as a traveler. What if he was someone Mate already knew and trusted?"

  "Elf goes bad?"

  "Elf gets next to Mate because he likes killing people. Then he decides he's finished his apprenticeship. Time to co-opt. It would fit with playing doctor, taking Mate's black bag."

  "So I shouldn't start rounding up Catholics and Orthodox Jews, huh? Old Alice would have been an asset to the Third Reich. Too bad her alibi checks out— flights confirmed by the airlines." He punched the dashboard lightly. "A confederate gone bad . . . I've gotta get hold of Haiselden, see what kind of paper he's been stashing."

  "What about storage lockers in Mate's name?" I said.

  "Nothing, so far. No POBs either. It's like he was covering his tracks all the time— the same kind of crap you get with a vic who's a criminal."

  "All part of the intrigue. Plus, he did have enemies."

  "Then why wasn't he more careful? She's right about the way he lived. No security at all."

  "Monumental ego," I said. "Play God long enough, you can start to believe your own publicity. Mate was out for notoriety right from the beginning. Fooled around on the edge of medical ethics long before he built the machine." I told him about the letter to the pathology journal, Mate's death-side vigils, staring into the faces of dying people.

  He said, "Cellular cessation, huh? Goddamn ghoul. Can you imagine being one of those poor patients? Here you are, stuck in the ICU, fading in and out of consciousness, you wake up, see some schmuck in a white coat just sitting there, staring at you. Not doing a damn thing to help, just trying to figure out exactly when you're gonna croak? And how could he look in their eyes if they were that sick?"

  "Maybe he lifted the lids and peeked," I said.

  "Or used toothpicks to prop them up." He slapped the dash again. "Some childhood he must've had." Another glance at the vanilla house. "An ex-wife. First I've heard of it. Don't want her popping up in the press and making me look like the fool I feel." Smile. "And some of my best sources have been exes. They love to talk."

  He got on the cell phone: "Steve, it's me. . . . No, nothing earthshaking. Listen, call County Records and see if you can find any marriage certificate or divorce papers on old Eldon. If not, try other counties . . . Orange, Ventura, Berdoo, try 'em all."

  "Before med school, he worked in San Diego," I said.

  "Try San Diego first, Steve. Just found out he was based there before he became a doc. . . . Why? Because it might be important . . . What? Hold on." He turned to me: "Where'd Mate go to med school?"

  "Guadalajara."

  That made him frown. "Mexico, Steve. Forget trying to pry anything out of there."

  I said, "He interned in Oakland. Oxford Hills Hospital, seventeen years ago. It's out of business, but there might be some kind of record."

  "That's Dr. Delaware," said Milo. "He's been doing some independent research. . . . Yeah, he does that. . . . What? I'll ask him. If none of what I told you pans out, try our buds at Social Security. No one's filed for insurance benefits, but maybe there're some kind of federal payments going out to dependents. . . . I know it's an hour of voice mail and brain death, Steve, but that's the job. If you get nothing with SS, go back to the counties, Kern, Riverside, whatever, just keep working your way through the state. . . . Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . Any callback from Haiselden? Okay, stay on him, too. . . . Leave fifty goddamn messages at his house and his office if you have to. Zoghbie said he runs laundromats . . . yeah, as in clean clothes. Check that out. If that doesn't lead anywhere, bug his neighbors, be a pest— What's that? Which one?" Tiny smile. "Interesting . . . yeah, I know the name. I definitely know the name."

  He hung up. "Poor baby is getting bored . . . he wanted me to ask you if working with me will turn him psychotic."

  "There's always that chance. What made you smile?"

  "Y
our man, Doss, finally called back. Korn and Demetri are gonna talk to him tomorrow."

  "Progress," I said.

  "Mrs. Doss," he said. "Was she able to move around on her own?"

  "As far as I know. She may have driven herself to meet Mate."

  "May have?"

  "No one knows."

  "She just walked out on hubbie?"

  I shrugged. But she had. Middle of the night, no note, no warning.

  No good-bye.

  The deepest wound she'd inflicted on Stacy . . .

  "Not very considerate," he said.

  "Pain will do that to you."

  "Time to call in Dr. Mate . . . Take two aspirins, hook yourself up to the machine and don't call me in the morning."

  He started up the car, then swiveled toward me again, wedging his bulk against the steering wheel. "Seeing as we'll be face-to-face with Mr. Doss soon, are there any blanks you want to fill in?"

  "He didn't like Mate," I said. "Wanted me to tell you."

  "Bragging?"

  "More like nothing to hide."

  "What was his beef with Mate?"

  "Don't know."

  "Maybe the fact that Mate killed his wife and he never knew it was going to happen?"

  "Could be."

  He leaned across the seat, moved his big face inches from mine. I smelled aftershave and tobacco. The wheel dug into his sport coat, bunching the tweed around his neck, highlighting love handles. "What's going on here, Alex? The guy said you could talk. Why're you parceling info out to me?"

  "I guess I'm still not comfortable talking about patients. Because sometimes patients feel really communicative, then they change their minds. And what's the big deal, Milo? Doss's feelings about Mate aren't relevant. He has an alibi as tight as Zoghbie's. Out of town, just like Zoghbie. The day Mate was killed he was in San Francisco looking at a hotel."

  "To buy?"

  I nodded. "He was in the company of a group of Japanese businessmen. Has the receipts to prove it."

  "He told you all that?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, ain't that fascinating." He knuckled his right eye with his left hand. "In my experience, it's mostly criminals who come prepared with an alibi."

  "He wasn't prepared," I said. "It came up in the course of the conversation."

  "What, like 'How's it going, Richard?' 'Peachy, Doc— and by the way I have an alibi'?"

  I didn't answer.

  He said, "Buying a hotel. Guy like that, rich honcho, gotta be used to delegating. Why would he do his own dirty work? So what the hell's an alibi worth?"

  "The job done on Mate, all that anger. All that personal viciousness. Did it smell like hired help to you?"

  "Depends upon what the help was hired to do. And who got hired." He reached out, placed a heavy hand on my shoulder. I felt like a suspect and I didn't like it. "Do you see Doss as capable of setting it up?"

  "I've never seen any signs of that," I said in a tight voice.

  He released his hand. "That sounds like a maybe."

  "This is exactly why I didn't want to get into it. There's absolutely nothing I know about Richard Doss that tells me he's capable of contracting that level of brutality. Okay?"

  "That," he said, "sounds like expert-witness talk."

  "Then count yourself lucky. 'Cause when I go to court I get paid well."

  We stared at each other. He shifted away, looked past me, up at Zoghbie's house. Two California jays danced among the branches of the sycamore.

  "This is something," he said.

  "What is?"

  "You and me, all the cases we've been through, and now we're having a wee bit of tension."

  Veneering the last few words in an Irish brogue. I wanted to laugh, tried to, more to fill time and space than out of any glee. The movement started at my diaphragm but died, a soundless ripple, as my mouth refused to obey.

  "Hey," I said, "can this friendship be saved?"

  "Okay, then," he said, as if he hadn't heard. "Here's a direct question for you: Is there anything else you know that I should know? About Doss or anything else?"

  "Here's a direct answer: no."

  "You want to drop the case?"

  "Want me to?"

  "Not unless you want to."

  "I don't want to, but—"

  "Why would you want to stay on it?" he said.

  "Curious."

  "About what?"

  "Whodunit, whydunit. And riding around with the po-lice makes me feel oh-so-safe. You want me off, though, just say so."

  "Oh Christ," he said. "Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah."

  Now we both laughed. He was sweating again and my head hurt.

  "So," he said. "Onward? You do your job, I do mine—"

  "And I'll get to Scotland afore ye."

  "It ain't Scotland I care about," he said. "It's Mulholland Drive— gonna be interesting hearing what Mr. Doss has to say. Maybe I'll interview him myself. When are you seeing the daughter— what's her name?"

  "Stacy. Tomorrow."

  He wrote it down. "How many other kids in the family?"

  "A brother two years older. Eric. He's up at Stanford."

  "Tomorrow," he said. "College stuff."

  "You got it."

  "I may be talking to her, too, Alex."

  "She didn't carve up Mate."

  "Long as you've got a good rapport with her, why don't you ask her if her daddy had it done."

  "Oh sure."

  He shifted into drive.

  I said, "I wouldn't mind getting a look at Mate's apartment."

  "Why?"

  "To see how the genius lived. Where is it?"

  "Hollywood, where else? Ain't no bidness like shooow bidness. C'mon, I'll shooow you— fasten your seat belt."

  9

  MATE'S BUILDING WAS on North Vista, between Sunset and Hollywood, the upper level of a seventy-year-old duplex. The landlady lived below, a tiny ancient named Mrs. Ednalynn Krohnfeld, who walked stiffly and wore twin hearing aids. A sixty-inch Mitsubishi TV ruled her front room, and after she let us in she returned to her chair, folded a crocheted brown throw over her knees and fastened her attention upon a talk show. The skin tones on the screen were off, flesh dyed the carotene orange of a nuclear sunburn. Trash talk show, a pair of poorly kept women cursing at each other, setting off a storm of bleeps. The host, a feloniously coiffed blonde with lizard eyes behind oversize eyeglasses, pretended to represent the voice of reason.

  Milo said, "We're here to take another look at Dr. Mate's apartment, Mrs. Krohnfeld."

  No answer. The image of a hollow-eyed man flashed in the right-hand corner of the screen. Gap-toothed fellow leering smugly. A written legend said, Duane. Denesha's husband but Jeanine's lover.

  "Mrs. Krohnfeld?"

  The old woman quarter-turned but kept watching.

  "Have you thought of anything since last week that you want to tell me, Mrs. Krohnfeld?"

  The landlady squinted. The room was curtained to gloom and barricaded with old but cheap mahogany pieces.

  Milo repeated the question.

  "Tell you about what?" she said.

  "Anything about Dr. Mate?"

  Head shake. "He's dead."

  "Has anyone been by recently, Mrs. Krohnfeld?"

  "What?"

  Another repeat.

  "By for what?"

  "Asking about Dr. Mate? Snooping around the apartment?"

  No reply. She continued to squint. Her hands tightened and gathered the comforter.

  Duane swaggering onstage. Taking a seat between the harridans. Giving a so-what shrug and spreading his legs wide, wide, wide.

  Mrs. Krohnfeld muttered something.

  Milo kneeled down next to her recliner. "What's that, ma'am?"

  "Just a bum." Fixed on the screen.

  "That guy up there?" said Milo.

  "No, no, no. Here. Out there. Climbing up the stairs." She jabbed an impatient finger at the front window, slapped both hands to her cheeks and plucke
d. "A bum— lotsa hair— dirty, you know, street trash."